West Memphis Murders Pt 1: Stevie, Michael and Chris

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Please say all three boys hands and think we're tied.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
The boys were feeding to death.

Speaker 3 (00:09):
Arkansas police have found the bodies of three missing boys
and say they were murdered. The three eight year olds,
all from West Memphis, Arkansas, were reported missing last Wednesday.
One of the mothers collapsed that the scene of the crime,
overwhelmed by grief.

Speaker 4 (00:27):
Danielli screama, I'm Brooke Fisher.

Speaker 5 (00:30):
And you're listening to Broad's next Door.

Speaker 4 (00:33):
I just want to give everyone a heads up before
we get started that this episode is going to contain
graphic descriptions of the deaths of children. It's a really
rough episode. It's going to be a pretty rough series.
This is Part one. We're going to be discussing the
murders that happened in West Memphis, Arkansas, on May fifth,

(00:54):
nineteen ninety three. This is often referred to as the
West Memphis Three case in reference to the three teenagers
who were convicted of the crimes and spent eighteen years
in prison, Damian Eckles, Jason Baldwin, and Jesse miss Kelly.
In part one of the series, we're going to focus
on the original victims, the three little boys who lost

(01:14):
their lives Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers really
just want to put out the part one, especially is
going to be pretty graphic.

Speaker 5 (01:24):
Daniella, do you remember hearing about the murders.

Speaker 4 (01:28):
I do remember hearing about the murders, but I don't
think I knew I was hearing about them at the time.
The whole Satanic panic thing was really really I was
very much aware of that because it was on a
lot of the daytime talk shows, there were some TV movies.
There were also a lot of different cases about kids
killing kids. I remember sometime during the spring of nineteen

(01:52):
ninety four, when I was in third grade, I would
ride my bike with my neighbors, Corey and Jason. They
were year below me in second grade, so I kind
of tried to boss them around. And we were only
kids in our age group on the street. So we'd
go ride our bikes in this big trailer park, this
mobile home park that was connected to our street. One day,
our neighbor Carmela stopped us. I've talked about her before.

(02:15):
She was like the neighbor who told us what sex was,
and she was in her twenties at the time, and
she watched a lot of daytime TV, and I remember
her telling us before we went on a bike ride
one day that she had been watching something on TV
and a bunch of teenage Satanists had killed three little
boys that were out riding their bikes. She like seemed
pretty upset about it. She was usually her stuff was

(02:37):
usually a little bit more conspiracy than what this sounded
to me. I had a huge imagination I was still
playing by Stephen King Roles. Then I thought there was
something really evil, then there had to be something that
was really good, that was stronger than the evil thing,
that there was always a way to win, that things
would always work out. As we left to go bike riding,

(02:58):
I just like remembered meing a quiz quick list in
my head, like, Okay, if we run into Pennywise from
it all, use Jason's and Hayler as battery acid. I
know that's like scientifically accurate. If we run into a
child abductor, there's three of us, I feel like we
can take them. I did not know what we would
do if we ran into a velociraptor. And I put

(03:21):
all of these things in the same category, because when
you're a little kid, that's what your imagination is like
and you fear to make believe almost more than real life,
because you're constantly walking a fine line between the two.
Carmela was right, well, kind of three little boys had
been tortured, they'd been killed. My rules had been wrong.
In West Memphis, Damian Eccles, Jason Baldwin, and Jesse miss

(03:44):
Kelly were being convicted of killing three eight year olds,
Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers and some kind
of satanic sacrifice. By the time this story makes it
on daytime talk shows and makes its way through the
mouths of hysterical housewife, it also catches the attention of
a duck commentary film crew from HBO. They've been filming
the trial and the months leading up to it. The
film Paradise Lost debuts in nineteen ninety six, telling a

(04:07):
story that maybe this was a different kind of devil,
not the one you'd make an altar for one that
looks just like the guy who lives next door.

Speaker 5 (04:14):
I did not know about the West Memphis murders when
they happened.

Speaker 4 (04:18):
I was really young.

Speaker 5 (04:19):
Dad, who's a judge, and he's gonna answer some questions
for us and clarify some things that are kind of confusing.
So I'm going to be mostly listening this episode and
getting to know the early parts of this case, getting
to know the victims of.

Speaker 4 (04:36):
This case, Stevie, Michael, and Chris. I want to tell
you about them and what we know about what happened
to them that day as we try and gain a
broader understanding of the murders that happened in West Memphis, Arkansas,
on May fifth, nineteen ninety three. Three little boys in
the second grade. They were good friends. It had been
a rainy spring, but it was a sunny day. They

(04:56):
were just having a regular day, a normal wednes day.
Stevie Branch had been thinking about getting home and riding
his spike all day. Stevie was born on November twenty sixth,
nineteen eighty four. His mom, Pam, divorced his dad, Stephen
Branch in nineteen eighty five, and the next year she
got remarried to Terry Hobb. When Stevie's only two years old,
at a little family get together, he bravely jumps into

(05:17):
a hole. Terry jumps in after him because he's just
a toddler, and he says that Stevie was just scooting
around trying to push himself up to the surface like
a little frog. So from that point onward he affectionately
gets the nickname frog Leg. In nineteen eighty nine, Stevie's
little sister, Amanda, is born, and Stevie is absolutely thrilled
to have a little sister. He takes his role of
being a big brother very seriously, and when Amanda starts

(05:39):
to talk, he also gets the nickname Bubba. His stepdad, Terry,
worked during the day for the Memphis ice Cream Company
making deliveries, and Pam worked an evening shift at the
Catfish Island restaurant from five to nine pm, so it
was a shorter shift, but it helps with money, and
that was their routine. A true child of the early nineties,
Stevie would take off with his friends pretty much as

(06:01):
soon as his homework was done. And in the spring
of nineteen ninety three, Stevie's maternal grandfather, Pam's dad got
him a new bike, and he was so stoked. His
old bike had gotten stolen, so he was very protective
of this new one. This was no eighteen inch wheels,
this was a twenty inch renegade bicycle. School got out
of two forty five at Weaver Elementary, and Pam would

(06:22):
walk Stevie home every day from school. He had this
new bike, and she wondered if he'd start asking to
ride his bike to school next year like the older
kids did. But for now, he was still in second grade.
He was still her baby, so she was just going
to take in every minute of it that she could.
He was already becoming his totally own person, with so
many likes and dislikes. He had this super white blonde
hair and he had taken to wearing it in these

(06:44):
little spikes. He felt and made him look very cool.
He was very into the teenage mutant into turtles and
had taught himself how to do not only a front flip,
but a backflip. Like most horrible stories start, this one
does as well. A beautiful day, a sunny day, a
normal day. It was just a regular day. It was
May fifth. Pam walcked Stevie home from school. They were
really close and he'd just look out at her and say,

(07:05):
I love you, mom, I love you, mama. He was
also really into Elvis at this time, so he'd sing
that that's all right, mama, song, and Pam said he
was going to be my little Elvis someday. I told
him how Elvis had bought his mama Grace Land, so
he'd have to buy me a promised land. I love you, Mama,
he'd say. He finished most of his homework At school.
Stevie loved Super Nintendo, he loved drawing, and the kid

(07:27):
even loved math. He was on the honor roll and
his teachers described him as very mature for his age.
He took things in. There was a knock at the
door and it was one of the other neighborhood boys,
Michael Moore. Michael wanted to know if Stevie could come
ride bikes, and immediately Stevie was like, please, Mom, can
I show him Michael the new bike Grandpa got me.
She's like, you know, I have to be workout bye,
but he promised to be back by four thirty. She

(07:48):
said if you're If you're not back by four thirty,
you're going to be grounded from that bike for two weeks.
He said, I promise I'll be back, Mama. I'll love you, mom,
and he was out the door. Michael Moore had his
cub Scouts uniform on because Stevie and Michael weren't just
in school together. They were in Cub Scouts, which they
both loved, but Michael took it very seriously. He'd wear
his uniform even on days when there was no meetings,

(08:08):
because even at eight years old, he was really proud
of his achievements, every badge he earned in school. When
they stood for the pledge of an allegiance, he'd put
his hands behind his back and do the Cub Scout salute.
He knew when he grew up he was going to
help wel He already knew that in his heart. He
had dark brown hair. With this nineties version of a
bowl cut, Michael literally looks like a sitcom child. He

(08:29):
loved tea ball. His favorite subject was also mad and
Michael was kind of described as the leader of the group.
He was a few months older than Stevie. He was
born on July twenty seventh, nineteen eighty four, so those
few months they count when you're eight. He was the
one of his friends that would speak up and answer
the adults. He had lands and ideas of what they
should do. He also had an older sister, Don She

(08:51):
was nine and Stevie Branch was in love with Don.
He called Don his girlfriend, and he had even bought
her a ring of her birthstone as a gift. It's
about three fifteen pm. Stevie and Chris ride their bikes
west on South McCauley Street, then turn north on fourteenth Street,
and with that, Stevie is out of Pam's view. She
preps some food for dinner. She's close with Michael's parents,
Tom and Diana Moore. They joke about Stevie being attracted

(09:14):
to older women, as he has a crush on Dawn,
who is basically in double digit Some little boys would
not be into one of their best friends having a
crush on their sister, but Michael had an amazing sense
of humor. He'd be the first to make something into
a joke. He'd always try and make other people, both
children and adults, feel comfortable through humor. Jim, here's a
knock of the door, and it's just like a few

(09:35):
minutes after the boys left, So she goes to see
if maybe they forgot something, but it's their other best friend,
Christopher Buyers, and Pam's like, I'm actually surprised you didn't
see them on their way over. They just left and
I swear this is so relatable. I think to a
lot of us spent so much of our childhood's doing
this knocking on the door and sew and so come
out to play. Chris had walked himself home after school,

(09:58):
but he found out he was His older brother was
usually there or a side door was unlocked, but it
wasn't today. His brother had a court thing, his mom, Melissa,
was at work, and his stepdad, John Mark, had been
across the river all day in Memphis because he was
having some medical desk done. John Mark was aiming to
be home by three when chrispher usually got there, but

(10:20):
he didn't get back until three ten, and when he
showed up, Christopher wasn't there at all. Christopher was born
Christopher Lee Murray on June twenty fourth, nineteen eighty four,
making him the oldest of three. He's got a month
and three days on Michael. His mom is Melissa, and
Christopher looks so much like his mom. His bio dad
is rick Murray, but Melissa and Ricky divorce when Chris

(10:42):
is four, and in nineteen eighty nine, Melissa marys John
Mark buyers. John Mark has two kids from a previous marriage.
He also illegally. Illegally, John Mark also adopts Christopher. He
changes his name from Christopher Lee Murray to Christopher Mark Buyers.
Chris was a super high energy kid. He had the
nickname Wormer because he was just constantly kind of squirming around.

(11:05):
He couldn't sit still in class, and unlike Stevie and Michael,
he could care less about math. In the first grade,
he'd had some behavioral complaints from teachers, so when second
grade started, he was put on Riddlin. Chris was really
creative and he asked a ton of questions. He wanted
to know how everything worked, How is the car moving?
Why do those kind of trucks make a different sound?
Why do people drive green cars? Where were cars in vented?

(11:27):
If he had wheels in an engine, could I make
a train? And truly, I mean in nineteen ninety three,
we couldn't look it up online. If you wanted answers,
you had to ask adults and hope for the best.
So Chris heard his fair share of enough with the question.
Chris was also a Cub Scout. Like Mike and Stevie
Cub Scouts. For Chris, there was a hope that Chris
would have some kind of structure and get some energy out. Recently,

(11:48):
he'd also set a couple of small fires, and that's
of course alarming because he's only eight. So he sent
to a school psychiatrist, a doctor Donald J. Eastman, who
diagnosed him with hyperactivity, opposition disorder, a refusal to follow commands,
and bounce bouts of impulsivity he's eight. In the same report,
he writes that Christopher is certainly a difficult child who

(12:10):
may require in hospital treatment to gain control of his behavior.
Chris had been sent to the principal's office a few
times that year, but everyone still describes Chris as a
really sweet kid. He's hyper, he has all this energy,
but he's not mean. He doesn't bully other kids, and
he's respectful and kind towards adults. In fact, when he
knocks on the door that day to see if he
can play with Stevie and Michael, he sees this Stevie's

(12:32):
little sister and Banda is watching them up at Babies,
which is Chris's favorite show. Nickelodeon had just started playing
reruns in the afternoon, so it was a really big
treat when it was on, and he asks. He says, ma'am,
can I please stay and watch the rest of this episode?
There were some parents who didn't want their kids playing
with Chris because of his behavioral issues, but Pam Knuey
was a good kid. Pam is played by Reese Witherspoon

(12:54):
in the movie version of this case, Devil's Not that
came out in twenty twelve, I believe, and for good reason.
Pam has so much love in her heart in this moment,
this sense of stability. She's making dinner, she's going to work,
she's actually training to be the closing manager, and she's
a happy person in general. But she's having a good day.
And as she hears them up at Baby's credits start
to play, she says, by to Chris, he's going to

(13:16):
find his friends now. Around this time, her husband Terry
gets home from work. Amanda's still on the couch watching TV.
Terry asks her where frog Leg is, referring to Stevie,
but Amanda says he's out. Chris doesn't find Michael and
Stevie right away. He goes back to his house and
pushes a chair to the window to try and get
it in, but he can't, and in the process he
kind of messes up the screen door. He gets a
skateboard and goes to Liver's friends. He finds them around

(13:39):
four fifteen. By four point thirty, Stevie still is in back.
Pam is agitated, but she's not worried yet. She just
needs to go to work and Terry has to give
her a ride because they have one car. On the
way to work, she has Terry drive by Michael Moore's
house to see if the bikes are out front, but
they're not. Pam shift starts at five at Catfish Island.
Around this time, John Mark buyers Chris is down is

(14:00):
going to the courthouse to pay a fine or pick
up his son who's paying a fine. There are a
couple different versions of that. He's really having an errand
day here this John Mark, and he sees Chris riding
his skateboard in the street, but he's riding belly down.
John Mark says, he pulls him off the skateboard, takes
him home and gives him one or two licks with
his belt for riding that way because it's dangerous, and

(14:20):
tells him to clean the carport. Between five forty five
and six pm, the kids play with him. Williams until
she is called by her father. She says she last
saw Stevie and Michael heading into Robin Pudwoods by the
way of what they call the Goodwin Entrance, which is
just kind of a makeshift entrance where there's like a
dead end bars that are on the side of the road.
Chris hasn't met up with the other boys yet. Around

(14:42):
five forty five, Melissa, Chris's mom, SE's him cleaning the
carboard as he was told to do for punishment for
riding the skateboard. John Mark comes home around six with
Chris's older brother, Ryan, who's thirteen, and Melissa tells Ryan
to go get Chris. They're going to go out to
eat that night, but Chris is in his room. They
can't find Chris anywhere. Around six fifteen, Chris, Michael, and
Stevie are seen playing in the Clark's backyard neighbors like

(15:06):
less than a quarter of a mile less than four
hundred meters, just a few houses down from the Hobbs house.
Jamie Clark Ballard stated that she heard Terry Hobbs call
Stevie back to the house, but Stevie doesn't go. Chris
is riding tandem with Stevie. He's on back of his bike.
They're behind Michael Moore and they're heading toward Robin Wood.
Dana Moore Michael's mom. They call her Dana in all

(15:26):
of the writing, but in the Paradise Lost films her
name is Diane. So I have both in my notes
and I apologize Missus Moore. Just a few minutes after
Missus Moore sees them, she tells Don go get your brother.
Don gets on her bike, but she can't find the
boys anywhere. She does see three teenage boys coming out
of the woods. So there's robin Hood Woods and to
the right of that there's kind of like this big

(15:48):
meadow you can use to get to the woods. Then
there's like this patch of woods itself, and if you
keep going through that, there's a gas station, a truck
stop in the highway, and there's this area called Devil's
Not in the woods that was like more used by
older kids. You had to cross a pipe bridge. We
had a lot of these. You typically had to go
like single file, but to get to Devil's Not you

(16:09):
had to go through Devil's Den, which was like a
thick tree covered area, super swampy with a drainage ditch
that is ten miles like sixteen kilometers long. A lot
of people will say that younger kids would be too
scared to cross that bridge with their bikes. But this
is one thing I'm going to disagree with, just because
I was not a particularly brave child, and that's something

(16:31):
I did a lot, especially if I was with other kids.
Want to fall, but it's not a get really hurt fall,
maybe a sprain and ankle fall, which, like I know,
no kid wants, but I feel like as a child,
you take a little bit more risks, not less. And
this is the area the boys are seen headed toward
this meadow to the right of the woods. Then there's
the pipe bridge. Then the terrain goes down. It gradually

(16:53):
drops like forty feet twelvesh meters. I'm pretending that I
know how to do these conversions, but unlike Michael Moore
and Steam Branch, I'm with Christopher Buyers in the EW
math group and four more math. This is the worst
kind of math if you ask me. This passing of time,
this like fifteen minute window where the boys somehow just disappear.

(17:15):
So many people will say they just saw them, but
now no one can find them. Don is still standing
outside of these wood She's trying to ignore these teenage
boys that just came out of there. They ask Don
if she wants a shot, and she doesn't know what
this means. She thinks they mean like needles, like an injection,
and she doesn't respond to them. Don has a bad feeling,

(17:36):
not even from the teenagers, but one of those kind
of I can't put your finger on it feelings, and
she's calling for them on the way back, Steve, Chris,
Michael and nothing. She just bolts home. This is a
really short window of time. There is one. There are
people that will come forward later and say they saw
them up until seven, but I'm not including those accounts

(17:58):
because I'll tell you when I do include them. No
one can find the boys anywhere. At seven forty nine,
the Sun's huts and then the neighborhood is full of
an echoing hall. Michael, Stevie, Christopher. No one can find them.
I'm going to read you a passage from the book
Devils Not by Mara Leverett. It's going to be one
of the books I'm reading for this series. It's also

(18:20):
what the twenty twelve film adaptation was based off of
John Mark Byers was the first parent to report a
child missing. At eight pm, with a full moon on
the rise, Byers telephone the West Memphis Police. Ten minutes later,
a patrol officer responded. She drove over cruiser down East
Barton Street in a working class neighborhood and stopped in
front of the buyers' three bedroom home. Buyers, an imposing

(18:42):
man six foot five inches tall weighing more than two
hundred pounds, with long hair tied back at a bil
met her at the door. Behind him stood his wife,
Melissa Mark. Byers did most of the talking. The officer
listened and took notes. The last time he was seen
he was cleaning the yard at five thirty that would
have been an hour and twenty minutes before sunset. They
described Christopher as four feet four inches tall, weighing fifty pounds,

(19:04):
with hair and eyes that were both light brown. The
officer left the buyers's house and with minutes was dispatched
to another call at a chicken restaurant about a mile away.
She pulled up at the Bojangles drive through at eight
forty two pm. Through the window, the manager reported that
a bleeding man had entered the restaurant about a half
hour more and gone into the woman's restroom. The manager
told the officer that the man who had blood on

(19:25):
his face and who had seemed mentally disoriented and wandered
around from the premises just a few minutes before she arrived.
When employees entered the restroom after he left, they found
blood smeared on the walls. The officers took the report
but investigated the incident no further. At nine oh one,
without ever having entered the restaurant, she drove away to
a criminal mischief complain about someone throwing eggs at a house.
At nine twenty four pm, the same officer responded to

(19:47):
another call from Barton Street, this one directly across from
the Buyers. You're a woman. Dana Moore reported that her
eight year old son Michael was also missing. Taking out
her pat again, the officer wrote stated she observed the victim,
her son, writing bicycles with his friend Stevie Branch and
Christopher Byers. When she lost sight of the boys, she
sent her daughter to find them. The boys could not
be found. More said the boys had been riding on

(20:08):
North fourteenth Street, going toward Goodwin that had been almost
three and a half hours earlier. By now, it had
been dark for more than two hours. Michael's described as
four feet tall, sixty pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes.
The officer wrote he was last seen wearing blue pants,
a blue Boy Scout of America shirt, orange and blue
Boy Scout hat, and tennis shoes. By now, second officer
had been dispatched to a catfish restaurant several blocks away. There,

(20:31):
another mother, Pamela Hobbs, was reporting that her eight year
old son Stevie Edward Branch was missing as well, me
interjecting here, when Terry picks Pam up from work at nine,
he walks inside and uses the payphone. She's not hurt,
sure who he's calling, so she grabs two pieces of candy,
one for Amanda and one for Stebe. And when she
gets to the car, it's just Amanda. Amanda says, Mama,

(20:52):
we can't find Bubba inside. Terry is calling the police.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
Mad Ad at work was a normal guy.

Speaker 6 (20:58):
Terry wellcame into the phone inside high bind.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
Up and he just walked a phone and I took two.

Speaker 7 (21:03):
Pieces of caney to the car and the man who
was heir?

Speaker 8 (21:06):
And I asked her words, Bubba, and.

Speaker 6 (21:09):
She's a mom a way can't find him and I
found the worst that he was.

Speaker 4 (21:13):
Dead as soon as a man just says that Pam
thinks he's dead. At first, the idea jars her that
she's gone so extreme so quickly. She tries to tell herself,
like everything is okay. He's just out. But Stevie is
eight years old. Stevie still sleeps with the night light.
Stevie is gonna buy his mom a promised land back
to the book. Pam Hobbs lived at sixteenth Street in

(21:35):
McCauley Drive, a few blocks away from the Buyerses and
the Moor. She reported that her son, Stevie, had left
home after school and that no one had seen him son.
The officer who took Hobbs' report did not note who
was supposed to have been watching Stevie while his mother
was at work, or who had notified Hobbs that her
son was missing. Stevie was described as four foot two
and just tall, sixty pounds, with blonde hair and blue eyes.

(21:56):
Police report noted he was last seen wearing blue jeans
and a white T shirt. He was riding a twenty
inch Renegade bicycle. Word of the disappearances spread quickly through
the subdivision as groups of parents began searching. Other residents
reported that they had seen some boys three or four maybe,
riding bikes near the end of McCauley Drive shortly before sunset.
McCauley Drive this is that dun End Meadow Park entrance

(22:18):
where Dawn was standing earlier. McCauley was a major street
in the neighborhood. The house on McCauley where Stevie Branch
lived was a few blocks south of the corner on Barton,
where the other two missing boys lived. They lived directly
across the street from each other. From Stevie's house, McCauley
wound west for a few blocks, ending at the edge
of a four acre patch of wood, a short distance
northwest of the other boys' homes. The wood separated the

(22:41):
subdivision from two interstate highways and their service roads on
the north, a welcome buffer from the traffic on their
northern edge for a few diesel fumed miles east west.
Interstate forty, spanning the United States between North Carolina and California,
converges and mess went Arkansas with north and South I
fifty five connecting New Orklands to Chicago. For truckers and

(23:01):
other travelers, the stretches of major mid Continental rest stop
where the highways hume through the West Memphis, the city
has formed a corridor fueling stations, motels, and restaurants. It
was easy for anyone passing through not to notice the
small patch of woods bordering that short section of highway.
What was more noticeable was the big blue and yellow
sign for the Blue Beacon truckwatch that stood several yards

(23:22):
from the edge of the woods alongside the service road.
Just as truckers knew the blue Beacon, kids in the
neighborhood to the south were familiar with the woods. That
the woods existed at all was an acknowledgment, none of
the need for parks or places for childrens to play,
but of the need for flood control. Years earlier, the
city had dredged a channel unromantically known as ten mile
by U Diversion Ditch to dispose of rainwater that ordinarily

(23:45):
would have flowed into the Mississippi River that was prevented
from draining by the Great levees that held back the river.
While the levees kept the Mississippi at bay, rainwater trapped
on this city side of the levee had posed a
different flood problem for years. Together, the combination of trees, ravines,
water vines made the area hilly wonderland for kids with
few unpaved places to play. They called the woods robin Hood.

(24:06):
Adults tended to make the name sound more proper, calling
it Robinhood Hill, but it was always just Robinhood for
the kids.

Speaker 9 (24:13):
Last time we saw almost about six point thirty yesterday evening.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
And what's gaw your name? My name is Mark Byers. Okay,
has your son sever half of before?

Speaker 9 (24:21):
None of the boys have ever gone off anywhere? None
of the three you have ever been missing or taken
off ever before.

Speaker 4 (24:27):
What's what's going through your mind? As a parent.

Speaker 2 (24:29):
I'm scared to death.

Speaker 9 (24:31):
I've seen you playing and sample I'm scared for the
safety and welfare of all three boys.

Speaker 4 (24:35):
Under its green canopy, they etched out bike trails, built
dirt ram established sports, and tied up ropes for swinging
over the main demand made river. They fished, scouted, camped, hunted,
had wars, and let their imaginations run. But at night,
when the woods turned dark, most kids stayed away. Besides
the risk from water, and Robinhood's closeness to the highways,

(24:56):
parents worried about transient who might be lurking there. Many
parents warned their children to stay out of the woods entirely,
but that ban was impossible to enforce. Robinhood was too alluring,
and so it was inevitable. On that Wednesday night in May,
as word flew from house to house the three eight
year olds were missing, the parents would rush to the
dead end of McAuley, where a path led into the woods.

(25:18):
It was about a half mile from the homes of
Christopher Biles and Michael Moore, and only a few blocks
further from that of Stevie Branch. At nine pm, the
temperature was seventy three degrees. The officer who had taken
the missing person's report on Christopher Buyers and Michael Moore
later reported that she'd ventured into the woods near the
Mayfair apartments to help look for the boys, but the
mosquito's a drivener out. The officer who had taken the

(25:39):
report on Stevie Branch also said later that he'd entered
the woods and searched with a flashlight for half an hour,
but those two efforts were the only police action that night,
no organized search by police would begin until the morning.
Me interjecting again, but Pam even goes into the police
station and is like, why aren't you doing anything? And
they're like, ma'am, they're a little boys. They'll be fine,

(25:59):
they'll come. She was like, my son is eighth. He
didn't run away. As officers assembled at the West Memphis
Police Department for their usual briefing on Thursday morning, May sixth,
nineteen ninety three, Chief Inspector Gary W. Gitchell announced the
three boys were missing and that he would be directing
the search. A search and rescue team from the Crittenden
County Sheriff's Office would be assisting. When a few hours

(26:20):
had passed without a sign of the boys, the police
department across the river in Memphis, Tennessee, dispatched a helicopter
to assist. By mid morning, dozens of men and women
had also joined police in the search. The families were
searching all night, and it's incredible to me that the
police refused to do anything. Detectives and ordinary citizens checked yards,
parking lots in various neighborhood buildings. The most intensive search, however,

(26:41):
remained focused on the woods for hours, groups of as
many as fifty law enforcement officers and volunteers combed through
four acres that lined the diversion ditch. At one point,
the searchers gathered on the north edge of the woods,
near the inner state and marched shou shoulder across the
woods until they emerged on the other side near the
houses to the south, and then that eff turned up nothing.

(27:01):
Members of the County Search and Rescue team slipped a
John bat into the bayou and pulled it down the stream,
but still nothing. By noon, most of their searchers, their
alarm increasing, had abandoned the woods to search elsewhere, but
one searcher stayed. Steve Jones, a Critten and County Juvenile
Corrections officer. He was trampling through the now empty section
of the woods nearest to the Blue Beacon truck wash

(27:23):
when he looked down into a deep sided gully, a
tributary to the primary ditch, and spotted something in the water.
Jones radioed what he had found. It was a shoe.
And this is all on tape. I cannot find out
who or why this is being taped when they make
this discovery that they're about to make. But this entire
sequence of events is on film, and there's not just
two camp there's like two camera men at one point.

(27:45):
When you watch it in the Paradise Lost movies, it
just makes it makes sense because it feels like it's
part of the documentary. But it's really weird to me
because I don't see footage from any of the other
places they were looking other than what's about to happen.
Sergeant Mike Allen of the West Memphis Police ran across
the Pipe bridge to Devil's Not clambered to where Jones
was waiting. Jones led Alan to a spot about sixty

(28:06):
yards south of the interstate. Standing on the edge of
a high sided bank, Jones pointed down at the water.
Floating on the surface was a boy's laceless black tennishoe.
I don't know why they didn't search more than night before.
I don't know if it would have made a difference.
I think it would have with timing, at least with
like these in between hours where the parents are like
outside physically searching and outside of their bodies and losing

(28:29):
their minds. Like Michael's dad is a truck driver. He's
not even in the state, and it's not like Dana
can just call him on his cell phone. She has
to wait until he calls to check in that night,
waiting for the phone to ring, not knowing if it's
her son found or her husband, whom she'll have to
tell her son is missing. Missing. It doesn't make sense.
Dana had just saw the boys riding their bikes and

(28:50):
then they were gone. Don kept thinking about the woods,
about the boys. She felt so much older already. Stevie's
sister Amanda woke up on May six. Then Bubba still
wasn't back. Amanda is almost five. She's aware something is wrong.
Chris's older brother Ryan, who usually gave him so much shit,
he knew now something was off. He knew there was
only so many places they could look. What if the

(29:10):
boys had been kidnapped? What if someone had taken them
right through the woods into a car on to I
forty and it's been over twenty twelve hours. How far
could they get by now? The black shoe in the water,
the child's shoe, This Juvie officer finds when he's all alone.
The time was approximately one thirty pm. The area had
been searched a lot by everyone. The family is the
police Gary Gigell, this real gem of a human will

(29:33):
claim that the tennis shoe was found by Detective Alan.
He says a cop found it, but we know that
Steve Jones found it. Mike Allen is not in the
water for more than ten minutes before he stands on
something that he thinks is a big log. But it's not.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Okay, where were the girls?

Speaker 10 (29:54):
Nobody?

Speaker 4 (29:57):
That log that Steve Allen thought he he was standing
on wasn't a log at all. Smichael Moore, he's not
in his cup Scout uniform. He's naked, He's been badly beaten.
He's hogtied with shoelaces, these kids shoelaces. So his body
arch is unnaturally backward, his right hand tied to his
right foot and his left hand tied to his left foot.

(30:18):
He's still bleeding from his wounds. As they pull his
body on the creek side, it's like someone had put
sticks over Michael, like they had tried to weigh the
body down intentionally. And it just gets so much worse
from here. So I'm gonna read from doubles not again
for a minute. By two fifteen, yellow crime tape was up.
Police cars were stationed at the McCauley Drive entrance to
the woods and at the entrance south of the Blue

(30:40):
Beacon for the detectives in a dense and seldom visited
part of the woods kids called Old Robin Hood. The
job ahead was as odious as obvious. If one body
had submerged in the stream, the others might as well be.
Detective Brian Ridge volunteered for the unnerving job. Leaving the
first body where it floated, the dark haired, heavy set
officer walked several street eat downstream and waded into the water,

(31:01):
blowing himself to his knees. He spreads his hands on
the silty bottom, then slowly on all fours. He began
to crawl up the narrow stream, searching the mud with
his hands, expecting and dreading that at any moment he
would touch another Dutch child. He encountered instead, as sticks
stuck unnaturally into the mud, he could feel something wrapped
around it. Dislodging the stick and pulling it up, he

(31:22):
found a child's white shirt. Carefully, Ridge stood up and
returned to the floating body. It didn't seem right to
him to leave it there. He lifted the body to
the bank. The officers knew from the photographs they'd been
showed of the missing boys that this was the body
of Michael Moore, and they could see that between the
time the boy was last seen and now he had
endured tremendous violence. The severity of the wounds to his

(31:42):
head suggested a component of rage. Once begun, the gruesome
search intensified. In quick succession. The ditch yielded Michael's cup,
scout cap, and a shirt, and a pair of blue jeans,
and the grim four warning sign of two more pairs
of tennis shoes without laces. Before long, all the clothes
listed on the three missing Persons report had been pulled

(32:03):
out of the water, with the exception of a sock
and two pairs of underpants. The detectives were especially intrigued
by the trousers, two of which were inside out, yet
all threes were zippered up and buttoned. Ridge re entered
the water further downstream, and this time he felt what
he had feared. Pulling against the mud section, he released
a second naked form. As it rose eerily to the surface,
the detective and the officer and the banks could see

(32:25):
that this body was also naked and bent backward Like
the first, the thin arms and ankles had been tied
together with shoelaces. This was the body of Stevie Branch.
He too showed signs of having been beaten, and the
left side of his face bore other savage marks. It
was hard to tell the wounds were so deep, but
on top of everything else, it looked like Stevie's face
may have been bitten. Minutes later, Rich found the body

(32:47):
of Christopher Buyers. Like the others, it was submerged face
down in the mud. He was also naked and tied
in the same manner as the others, but when the
detectives rolled him over in the water, they were assaulted
by another shock. Christopher's scrodum was gone and his pen
had been skinned. Only a thin flap of flesh remained
whereas genitals should have been, and the area around the
castration had been severely punctured with deep stab wounds. Going

(33:10):
to play a clip for you from Steve Jones, who
was working on the case that day.

Speaker 7 (33:15):
I'd call the wesmim's PD in the dispatcher Lucy had
answered the phone. She said, well, we've had three children
missing since last night, so well, you know, I'm gonna
go help too. You know, I'm not seeing anything. I
see an Oki is running around on the bicycles. And
then I thought about Robin Hood trailer that I was
driving down Good One, and I said, well, I'm gonna
go over there, just get out, walk around.

Speaker 4 (33:37):
I really do have a hard time with this because
they make it seem like at around one o'clock people
involved in law enforcement. This guy's like a juvenile detention officer.
So I don't think that's even that's not like an
actual cop. But the family and friends, everyone has been
searching this area.

Speaker 11 (33:57):
He's looking around, you know, just basically looking out in
the back. And I looked into the small ditch that's
where I saw the tennis shoe at I called.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
Westman's Police Department.

Speaker 11 (34:07):
Dad, Mike Allen meet me out here, and so I
showed him the area the tennis shoe, and Mike Kad
said he was going to take it out.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
Mike fell into the water and down.

Speaker 4 (34:18):
On him like this.

Speaker 11 (34:19):
He looked up and I said what and he said, well,
it feels like my leg is caught on something like
a log or something. And Mike fell backwards, and when
he fell backwards, his leg came up and one of
the little bodies was on his leg.

Speaker 4 (34:30):
And now it was three pm. Detectives found the two
bicycle thirty yards away, also under water, at three twenty,
nearly two hours after the first body was recovered. Someone
at the scene thought to call the county corner. When
the corner arrived, he found all three of the bodies
out of the water and lying on the bank. He
pronounced the boys dead at the scene at approximately four pm.
But it has begun as a search now became a

(34:51):
murder investigation. With Kitchell still in charge, His officers photographed
and videotaped the scene alongside the stream where the three
bodies lay. By now how the bodies had been out
of the water for so long that they were attracting
flies and other insects. Gigel ordered the stream sand bagged
above where the bodies were found, and the section below
it drained, in the hopes of recovering Christopher's missing genitals,

(35:13):
the missing underpants, and maybe a murder weapon or other evidence.
Then he walked to the edge of the woods where
a large crowd had gathered. Terry Hobbs, Stevie Branch's stepfather,
was ducking under the yellow police tape. As Gigel approached.
Gigel told Terry, yes, the boy's bodies had been found,
and yes it was clear that they had been murdered.
Hobbs crumbled to the ground and cried his wife, Ham

(35:34):
hob Stevie's mom fainted from the moment.

Speaker 6 (35:37):
They totally sad, really lost it blow reality.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
Ham Hobb's son, Steve, and two of his friends were
found murder.

Speaker 4 (35:56):
Ggel spoke briefly to reporters, and then he walked over
to John mark by Steps and Chris had been mutilated.
Buyers was leaning against a police car as a photographer
for The West Evening Times aimed her camera and clicked
to the shutter. Gitgill held out a hand to Buyers,
as if to support or even embraise him. Buyers, who
stood it almost ahead taller than Gitchell, draped his arm

(36:17):
over the detective's shoulders. When a reporter approached, Buyers shook
at his head in a gesture of bewilderment. He had
searched that very sight just the night before. He said,
I was out looking until four thirty. I walked within
ten or fifteen feet of where they were found, and
I didn't see them many people had searched the area
and see no trace of the mincing children. Buyers then

(36:38):
provided the reporter more information. One of the boys had
been hit above the eye. Buyers said another boy's jaw
was injured, and the assault on the third child had
been even worse than that. Eventually, onlookers saw Blackhurst drive
east on the service road and turn into the Blue
Bleakin truck wash, where it backed up to the edge
of the lot. Police, covered in dirt and sweat, carried

(36:58):
three body bags through the opening on the north edge
of the woods, across a grassy field, and loaded them
through the open rear door. Before those doors were even shut,
rumors were spreading that this was a satanic ritual, that
the boys had been sacrificed. Rumors of cult activity had
spread in West Mempris for years, and for some people
this seemed like confirmation in that May six was a Thursday,

(37:21):
the sky was still doing that cruel thing, being blue,
pretending it was the same world. But Stevie, Michael and Chris,
who just twenty four hours before had been bounding out
of their second Gla classroom, they were gone, and they
didn't just die in an accident. They were beaten to death, mutilated, drowned, tortured,
These cub scouts, these babies who loved their mothers and
playing pretend, These boys who still believed in Santa Claus

(37:44):
and slept with night lights, they were met with a
violent end. They had defensive wounds on their tiny hands.
Michael was going to grow up and help people. Stevie
was going to buy his mom a promised land. Christophor
still had so many questions. I cannot imagine how afraid
they were, all three of them. What they saw happened
to each other, what they felt happened to themselves, and

(38:07):
their mothers knowing this, finding this out. If you watch
the reactions, if you watch the mother's reactions, if you
watch the father's reactions, who are there Michael's Moore's father
was out of state, But Terry Hobbs, to me, looks
grief stricken. Look at him when Pam faints, Look at
how his fingers are shaking when he goes to light
that cigarette. And not only in like the Paradise Lost

(38:29):
version where Sanitarium is playing in the background. If you
watch the scene of this parents finding out without that
background music and just the whole thing, it is honestly,
truly gut wrenching. John Mark Byers looks like he's been
punched in the gut. These men will become suspects later on,
and both of them have done a lot of shitty things,

(38:51):
and maybe we'll find reason in our research why they
should be suspects. Like I said, they both had some
CD stuff in their past. But to me, in this moment,
everyone looks outside of themselves, and I do feel defensive
in a way of the reactions the parents initially made,
because you will hear criticism. How could they be so naive?

(39:11):
How could they think there's really some kind of Satanic ritual?
Listen to their accents and they're all Southern Baptists and
ignorance this can you believe what they said? And yeah,
some foul things will come out of their mouths. I'm
not discounting that they will say horrible shit. But what
do you do when the police tell you they are
one hundred percent sure they have the people who killed
your kids? They tell you how your kids were tortured

(39:35):
so violently, how they died, and after that, how are
you not supposed to believe in evil? Yesterday, Pam Hobbs
thought this world was good. Now look at the world
she has to live in. She never gets to unknow
that Stevie's perfect little head was caved in. She never
gets to unknow that Michael Moore's mother never like he

(39:56):
was wearing his cub Scout uniform. The things Christopher's parents
are told that happened to his body. They're told he
was literally tortured and castrated. How are they supposed to
retain any semblance of sanity in this To this day
you can hear Pam speak about her son, and I
swear we'll pull at every heartstring. I'll put some of

(40:18):
it at the end of this episode, after the bodies
are found, the community of West Memphis is completely rocked.
That Friday, May seventh, it's the day after the bodies
are found, and the teachers from the school have a meeting.
One of the teachers says, I think we can tell
the children that the person who did this is very,
very sick. The police were saying very little at this time.

(40:39):
Gitchell was very tight lipped. The media was really hounding
the families for information. They didn't have much other than
they were literally getting ready for the funerals. So they
had seen the bodies of these boys. By this point,
Mark Byers was giving a lot of media interviews, but
it was even taking a toll on him. Before the funeral,
he says, I've got to find a way to bury

(41:01):
my son. That weekend with Mother's Day and people in
the community raised twenty five thousand dollars to pay for
the kid's funerals. They also started a reward fund. On
May tenth, the West Memphis Evening News said police still
confident they'll solve murders. Detective Gitchell added, We're going to
figure it out. We're gonna make it. I'm going to
play some clips of the parents for you as they're

(41:22):
initially processing this grief.

Speaker 12 (41:23):
You could say I saw like died myself because I
shut out humanity and I didn't like people. I was
a hateful person, and before this happened, I wasn't that
type of person.

Speaker 13 (41:36):
Words can't explain what the grief from the what you
go through, and we have found this to be a
role of its own.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
Tifer, I never hurt anybody, had a general loving and
getting hard.

Speaker 5 (41:47):
And agrees about him and that's what and I humiliated
his little body.

Speaker 4 (41:52):
I took this little manhood before he knew what it was.

Speaker 1 (41:55):
And I hate him for it.

Speaker 4 (41:57):
I never hated anybody in my own life. And I
they sing and the mothers.

Speaker 9 (42:02):
That bore them walk through the valley of the Shadow
of Death. I shall fear no evil, and I'm not
scared of the devil. Got know who my comforter is,
thy Rod and thy staff comfort me. And I thank
you Lord for letting me be able to believe in
that with all my heart. I hope y'all really believe
in your master, the Satan Sleuth's foot devil himself, because

(42:26):
he's not gonna help you. He's gonna laugh at you,
maulk at you, and torture you.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
He didn't need your help.

Speaker 9 (42:31):
Devil's got all the devils he needs, good Lord, said Lucifer,
And the third of the angels were cast from heaven.
He didn't need them, but he took their mind and
he manipulated them, and they prayed to Satan, and they
prayed to the Devil, and they had their Satanic worship
services out here.

Speaker 4 (42:47):
Crazy things.

Speaker 9 (42:49):
To me, this place as I stand is like hell
on earth, because I know that three babies were killed
right out here where I stand. I know my son
was cast right and possibly laid there on that bank
and bled to death. I know he was show I
know one boy's head was beating beyond recognition. I know
one little boy was skinned almost like an animal, cut

(43:12):
had to shave his head, had all types of injuries
to the head where they just kept beating and tuning
all them and killing them and killing them. They killed
them two or three times.

Speaker 14 (43:22):
I can't imagine what was going through Michael's mind, you know?

Speaker 5 (43:25):
Was he calling for me?

Speaker 14 (43:26):
How long did they leave him their tied up on
that ditch bank before they decided to kill him?

Speaker 2 (43:31):
What were they doing to him?

Speaker 15 (43:32):
Was he was he conscious or unconscious?

Speaker 16 (43:35):
Did he watch the other two boys get cut?

Speaker 14 (43:37):
He was really being killed by real monsters.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
First of all, what you hold in the handle with
my hand with Davie's boy's gap, I kiss, and I've
been wearing it around my head.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
Like you.

Speaker 4 (43:53):
Did. He like scouted. I have.

Speaker 1 (43:58):
I have, I've been I've been on a guilt tree
up about it.

Speaker 17 (44:01):
But it wasn't my fault.

Speaker 2 (44:03):
I was at work.

Speaker 10 (44:04):
Have you contemplated joining Stevie before year natural?

Speaker 4 (44:09):
The fucking gall of whoever this piece of shit reporter
is that He has not only asked her if she
blames herself, he is now asking her if she's going
to kill herself.

Speaker 13 (44:21):
Have you thought about suicide?

Speaker 15 (44:23):
Have I suicide?

Speaker 13 (44:26):
I felt like Dan, but not suicide?

Speaker 2 (44:29):
Not suicide. Do you feel that.

Speaker 4 (44:31):
The people that did this were worshiping.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
A Yes today and just look at the freak I
just look at them.

Speaker 4 (44:41):
Have to be really careful that no metallic eclips get
in because they were like the first to sue.

Speaker 5 (44:47):
It's honestly hard to learn about these these children because
they had such beautiful personalities and lives. Like the day
they weren't barking on just sounds like straight out of
like a you.

Speaker 4 (45:03):
Know, a kids movie.

Speaker 5 (45:05):
You know, like they just wanted to ride bikes and
play with each other and have taken away from them
in the cruelest way possible. And while it's hard to
hear about these kids and get to know them, it's
also amazing to get to know them because it's it
is sad the having these kids legacy be the West
Memphis murders. You know, No, they're Stevie, they're Michael, and

(45:29):
they're Chris, they're these They were these kids with full
lives and full personalities.

Speaker 4 (45:33):
They're not just bodies that were found. Olli Graf forty
one people. During the investigation. One of the big notes
that's made is the knots on Chris and Stevie are
the same, but the knots on Michael Moore are different.
At one point they question Ryan Clark, Chris's thirteen year
old brother. Ryan said the evening when he was out

(45:54):
looking for the boys that he had heard five really
loud splashes and the grass and brush crackling. Ryan told
the detectives, after hearing the first two splashes to the
yelled hello, is anyone there? There was no answer, and
after the third splash, he and his friends had taken
off running. When they got to the pipe, he said
they heard a gunshot. At one point, the detectives cast
a pretty large net. Someone had suggested the way the

(46:15):
boys were tied wrist to ankles behind their backs was
like the way some American soldiers had been tied when
they were captured in Vietnam. So the police even checked
hospitals for reports of veterans in the area who might
have been treated for injuries, and they checked area carpet
cleaners looking for anyone who had leaned up blood stains.
They compiled descriptions of vagrants, strangers, mental patients, loiterers, and hoboes.

(46:35):
They investigated one man who was said to have made
vulgar remarks to two young girls, another who had reportedly
drilled holes through his apartment to spy on neighbors, and
another who aroused suspicion by failing to attend church for
the past few weeks. They filed reports on men who
were said to have tortured and killed animals, or who
had confided having murderous fantasies, or said to be into
child pornography, or whom a tipster had described as brutal.

(46:57):
They also saw to it at the outline of the crime,
which was pretty much all they knew, was reported on
the television show America's Most Wanted. As news of the
murders spread, police across the nation tried to help away,
relaying information about hundreds of cases that they thought might
be related. A woman reported that on the evening the
boys disappeared while driving along the service road in the
vicinity of the Blue Beacon between six and six thirty pm.

(47:18):
She'd seen all three of the victims riding on two bicycles.
If that report was true, it would place the boys
at the opposite entrance to the woods from the one
where other reports had placed them last. But some reports
were more credible than others. Narcotics detective in Memphis reported
that both John Mark and Melissa Byers has worked as
confidential enbornments for the Memphis Police and the sheriff Department

(47:39):
in Shelby County. The information was potentially important, and indeed
the West Memphis Police did not know it already. It
suggested that the mother and the stepfather of the most
seriously brutalized child were involved somewhere another with criminal activity.
But if the West Memphis Police followed up on this lead,
they entered no record of it in the file. A
week and a half after the murders, Police and Memphis
were told that four days after the bodies were found,

(48:01):
two young Memphis men, Chris Morgan and Brian Holland, had
left town abruptly and had moved to Oceanside, California. When
West Memphis police checked on the two, they learned that
Morgan's parents and his former girlfriend lived in West Memphis,
near where the victims lived, and that he had once
had an ice cream route in the victim's neighborhood. Detectives
asked police in Ocean Side to pick up the two

(48:22):
for questioning. The officers in California complied, and on May seventeenth,
Morgan and Holland were given polygraphic examinations. The test indicated
that both men were deceptive in their answers. And I
will play these interviews for you, and it's filmed, and
this Chris Morgan kid seems way more unhinged to me
than anyone else I've seen in these investigations, and I've

(48:43):
heard very little on him. Morgan had become upset, blurted
out that he had been hospitalized for alcohol and drug
abuse and stated that he might have committed the murders.
He then immediately recanted the statement. He just keeps egging
the police on and during it, and he's like, yeah,
so I did kill them. I'm super crazy. What now.
At one point he covered up like the camera in
the room, and the cop is just like, son, you

(49:03):
can't do the Kitchell meanwhile, was demanding more information from
the state's crime laboratory in the Medical Examiner's office, but
he was frustrated. Two weeks after the murders. On May nineteenth,
the police bring in the adoptive father of Chris Buyers,
John Mark Buyers, for questioning.

Speaker 14 (49:20):
Information that you have something to do with disappearance of
voice and.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
Ultimately of the murder.

Speaker 15 (49:26):
It's almost more than I can believe, you know once you.

Speaker 18 (49:30):
Just said to me, and it makes me so mad
inside that I just.

Speaker 4 (49:34):
Kind of got to hold myself here in this chair.

Speaker 14 (49:37):
I had Harry moved. I had to have over thirty
puby hares pulled out, plus the roots.

Speaker 2 (49:44):
We're gonna interview the other two box.

Speaker 16 (49:46):
We're gonna ask them same questions.

Speaker 4 (49:48):
Steve Jones, that juvenile privation officer who found the floating shoe,
he worked for his assistant for a man named Jerry Driver,
who was a county juvenile officer and for some reason,
and he was also seen by the police as the
as the expert on the occult. So they're bringing Jerry
and Steven for like what they know of what their

(50:09):
occult expertise is. The first name that comes up is
Damian Eccles and how we ended up with juvenile probation
officers who were like, yes, actually, I I am an
expert on the on the occult. I've seen Mysteries of
the Unknown infomercials several times on television. All of this, though,

(50:29):
I will tell you, somehow leads to this confession by Jesse.
Miss Kelly, who isn't even particularly close with Jason Baldwin
and Damian Eccles who are best friends.

Speaker 19 (50:40):
Face and Bruce malob you know, Gayson and stay Branch. Okay,
he started doing the same time and took up Michael Ormore,
took off Froner. So I've chased him and grabbed him
and held him to they get there.

Speaker 17 (50:55):
In another you saw somebody with a nap who had
a name Jason.

Speaker 16 (50:59):
Jason had a knighte What did he cut with the
knat would.

Speaker 2 (51:02):
You see him cut? Or who did you see him cut?
I saw him cut? Where did he cut him?

Speaker 19 (51:06):
He's cut him in the face.

Speaker 4 (51:07):
Cut him in Another.

Speaker 14 (51:08):
Boy was cut, I understands the bottom only his bottom.

Speaker 16 (51:12):
Was he fist down and he was cutting on him?

Speaker 2 (51:15):
Or about bottom? Do you mean right here in his
growing area? Okay? So now what his painis is was
cut at?

Speaker 18 (51:22):
Which boy was that? You're talking about the buyer's boy again?

Speaker 3 (51:27):
Okay?

Speaker 17 (51:27):
Are you sure that he was the one that was
cut That's why I'm not saying him cutting on him.

Speaker 4 (51:31):
This is from Devil's not. Within hours of the bodies
being discovered, the investigation divided roughly along three lines. These
were essentially that the children were killed by someone close
to them, that they were killed by one or more strangers,
or that they were killed at gishell has already suggested
by members of a gang or cult. This unusual third
prong of the investigation arose early and was the most

(51:51):
sharply focused from the start, while detective's efforts in the
other two directions often appeared chaotic bumbling exasperated the problem.
Though the bodies were found at about one thirty, the
coroner was not called until nearly two hours later. By
that time he arrived, fly larvae were starting to appear
in the victim's eyes and nostrils. By three point fifty eight,
when the coroner pronounced the first of the three boys dead,

(52:12):
the bodies had been lying in open air for more
than two and a half hours, covered for part of
that time with plastic in temperatures that approached the high eighties.
The coroner reported that the water in the ditch was
sixty degrees, but after the bodies were removed from it,
the rate of their deterioration had been rapid. The coroner
noted that it was difficult to assess the extent of
rigor mortis due to the way the bodies were tied,
that all three showed signs of post mortem straining on

(52:35):
face and chest, and that the bodies of Michael and
Christopher showed signs that they may have been sexually assaulted.
For the next several weeks. The location and condition of
the bodies as they were found on the afternoon of
May six, would constitute almost entirety of what police knew
about the murders. The sandbagging of the ditch had turned
up nothing. Though detectives had scoured the money bottom, they
found no missing body parts, no underwear, no apparent murder weapon.

(52:57):
The search of the area along the stream had provided
little more. They'd found one fingerprint in the mud and
one partially obliterated footprint, but they'd also found what struck
them as stunning, a lack of blood. Detectives made casts
of the prints, but though dozens of pring fingerprints would
be sent to the lab, no match was ever made.
Aside from the bodies, the clothing and the bike. A
LAE took a minuscule amount of evidence from the scene.

(53:17):
The absence of physical evidence was surprising, especially for a
triple murder that had not involved a gun and witten,
in which one of the victims had clearly lost a
lot of blood. Confusion and disorganizations compounded the detective's problems.
Later questions would be raised about the probes scientific integrity
as well. The problems that would plug the investigation began
to appear soon after the bodies were found. Sometime apparently

(53:40):
within the first day or two, an undated, unsigned summary
regarding the investigation was printed on police department stationary. The
summary reported the names and ages of the victims, the
approximate time the boys were last seen alive, and the
fact that the bicycles belonging to two of the victims
had been found submerged about fifty feet away. But even
the document was not reliable report, for example, that more

(54:01):
rather than buyers had been obviously castrated. Another key part
of the report was oddly ambiguous. It read a crime
scene search failed to locate any traces of blood or
other evidence which would lead investigators to believe the victims
had been murdered in the area where the bodies were located.
That seemed to just suggest the detective's earliest suspicion was
that the boys were murdered somewhere else. The document also

(54:23):
noted that a hammer around object was used to create
trauma to the head of all three victims, that there
is a possibility that Buyers may have been injected by
a hypodermic needle, and that the medical examerner also advised
the evidence would tend to indicate that the victims had
been struck with a belt containing studs or a raised surface.
Obvious errors, its overall credibility had to be questioned. Immediately

(54:45):
after the crimes, the police on May seventh, interview to
boys Damian Eckles and his best friend Jason Baldwin.

Speaker 18 (54:52):
While from Jid Good Neighbors, you can turn to the court, news, weather,
and sports.

Speaker 11 (55:00):
I'm Diana Days and I'm Tony Brooks.

Speaker 13 (55:02):
In a statement given to the police and obtained by
a Memphis newspaper, seventeen year old Jesse miss Kelly allegedly
confesses to watching two other suspects choke, rape, and sexually
mutilate three West Memphis second graders.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Jenna Newton Reports.

Speaker 20 (55:16):
According to the published report, miss Kelly told police he
watched eighteen year old Damien eccles and sixteen year old
Jason Baldwin brutalized the children with a club and a knife.
The report says miss Kelly told police Eccles in Baldwin
raped one of the boys and sexually mutilated another as
part of a cult ritual. Miss Kelly is quoted as

(55:37):
saying he did not take part in the rape and mutilation,
but that he helped subdue one victim who tried to escape.
At a press conference, Inspector Gary Gitchell said the case
against the accused teens.

Speaker 4 (55:49):
Is very strong. It appears satanic.

Speaker 20 (55:56):
Worship may have played a role in the murders. Since
the very the beginning of the investigation, people all around
West Memphis have come forward with stories of satanic cults.

Speaker 4 (56:07):
On June fourth, they make an arrest.

Speaker 10 (56:09):
The investigators now filing in and the reporters are getting
ready to cover this news conference. Many parents in the
community will be breathing a sigh of relief. If this
indeed is the break that the police have.

Speaker 3 (56:19):
Been waiting for.

Speaker 10 (56:20):
Chief Inspector Garry Gidchell is about to begin and he's
also bringing in some photographs. Obviously these would probably be
photographs of the suspects, of course, suspects unofficially at this point,
although many believe in this triple murder of the three
eight year old boys.

Speaker 18 (56:36):
Rested at two forty four pm Thursday, June third, nineteen
ninety three. Jesse Lloyd miss Kelly. Jesse miss Kelly is
seventeen years of age. Charles Jason Baldin he is sixteen
years of age. Michael Wayne Eccles Mister Eckles is eighteen
years of age. He is charged with three counts of

(56:57):
capital murder.

Speaker 5 (56:58):
The world, we can say, has become more open minded
as we progress through different decades. Small towns also can
be small small minded when shocking murders happen.

Speaker 4 (57:12):
When murders happen.

Speaker 5 (57:13):
In general in small towns, there is a panic to
catch the killers, to have them away, to give a
peace of mind to the town, to the families, for
the cops to be heroic, for it to be solved
as quickly as possible. But sometimes when this happens, evidence
can be swept under the rug. Things can be rushed

(57:35):
so that people can solve a crime and other innocent
lives can be lost that way, and.

Speaker 4 (57:41):
Paradise Loss is hard to watch.

Speaker 5 (57:43):
It is, but it's important to watch because I think,
I do think it's one of the most impactful documentaries
like ever ever and shows the importance of documentaries and
shows the importance of talking.

Speaker 4 (58:01):
About these cases. But it is.

Speaker 5 (58:04):
It is tough watching, especially like the crime scene stuff
and hot and learning about how the way in which
these kids lost their lives lost their innocence, lost their childhood,
lost their normal Wednesday, lost their opportunity to be happy

(58:24):
adults and little kids and everything. It's it's heart wrenching,
But yeah, I still recommend watching Paradise Loss.

Speaker 9 (58:32):
Were you surprised when these guys were rist? I was
surprised about Jason Bobler because he's like a flat one
of them all.

Speaker 4 (58:38):
But I wasn't surprised about Jesson, Miss Kelly.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
And Dane and Echelss.

Speaker 4 (58:42):
I just expect the old center that I'm overwhelmed. I
listened to a lot of stuff and read a lot
of stuff to get ready for this series.

Speaker 14 (58:51):
I'm so frustrated because it seems like they have so
much rights, they have no rights, like a.

Speaker 2 (58:55):
Hand in the paper, the other day.

Speaker 14 (58:56):
Now taxpayers of Greton County are gonna have to buy
them a suit because they want them to go on
to court looking like what they are criminals. They're in jail.
They should wear jail clothes. Why do they need to
have a nice suit bought by the county so they
look presentable? They don't want in shackles and chains. You know,
these are not boys that murdered. Aren't kids. You know
they stopped being boys.

Speaker 18 (59:16):
You know when they plan this.

Speaker 14 (59:17):
I hear I sit there and watch their parents and
stuff coming out of court crying talking about their son's rights.

Speaker 2 (59:22):
What about our son's rights? Where the hell was his
rights out on that ditch bank? He had no rights.

Speaker 14 (59:27):
He had the rights to be brutally murdered, be beat
to death, an eight year old little boy.

Speaker 2 (59:31):
Where was his rights?

Speaker 15 (59:32):
I'm Diane Moore, Michael Moore's mother. Last week and lash
Market Deckelsman was in there stare me down like it
was my fault I had a child that his child.
Could we set that big star with saying the people
that are supporting these people that look at us like
worre scum and these other people are just the greatest

(59:52):
thing that they've ever known, and now they want to
have them all just dressed up and act like little
choir boys in court and here you go. He didn't do
anything wrong. My son didn't do anything wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
He's just a boy.

Speaker 4 (01:00:03):
No.

Speaker 14 (01:00:03):
June third, did you have an assignment to locate a
particular person.

Speaker 17 (01:00:08):
My assignment was to contact Jesse miss Kelly Junior at
that time.

Speaker 14 (01:00:13):
Was the defendant a suspect, No, sir. If he was
not a suspect, why were you assigned to contact.

Speaker 17 (01:00:19):
He was a friend with friends with Damien Eckles and
Jason Baldwin.

Speaker 14 (01:00:25):
What if anything did he tell you during this conversation
before the tape recording.

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
Okay, he had told us that he had.

Speaker 16 (01:00:33):
Attended some satanic cult type meetings that boys along with
girls would attend. There would be sessions of sex orgies,
as he called them, That dogs and animals had been killed.

Speaker 5 (01:00:51):
When murders happened in small towns, especially years ago. When
you know, I like to think as we progress forward
in society and we've become more open minded.

Speaker 4 (01:01:03):
This is an article in The Ringer by Justin Sles
called tip Scales, The idea of killer teens in the
Christian South not any greater sense of purpose was mainly
what intrigued Sheila Nevis, then the head of HBO's documentary division,
when she spotted a story about the case on the
inside pages of The New York Times. I had a
friend who was working on twenty twenty and they had
done a film about exorcism in one of the magazine pieces,

(01:01:26):
Nevin says. She said, it was one of the highest
rated pieces they had. So when I saw this tiny
little article in the Times, I wasn't about to free
anybody that was guilty. I said, I'm going to send
some kids down there. Those kids turned out to be
Joe Berlinger and Bruce Knofsky, the young documentarians who had
recently completed the acclaimed Brothers Keeper. They mobilized immediately, landing
in Arkansas shortly after the arrest. The idea was to

(01:01:49):
tell a story of disaffected youth, about kids killing kids.
There was no reason not to believe the press, Berlinger said.
At the time. I was a little naive that what
you read in the paper must have some truth to
and all the press reports coming out of Arkansas were
saying that this was like a slam dunk, an open
and shot case. With a confession that was printed in
the newspaper. By getting to the story quickly, the directors

(01:02:09):
were able to document the post arrest period and two
trials that followed. We'll talk more about the arrival of
the Paradise Lost Crew and what exactly that article was
that brought them to West Memphis in the first place.
I think sometimes myself and others have overlooked the stories
of Stevie and Michael and Chris non intentionally, I think
devastating from the time you know about it, But I

(01:02:32):
think everyone wanted justice for the West Memphis three also
did want justice for these three little boys. We didn't
want the wrong guys in jail. I know, for me,
even as a teenager myself, the idea of another three
dead kids made this so overwhelming. It made it feel
so much worse today. I just really wanted us to
get to know Stevie, Michael, and Chris better in this episode,
because everything else that follows is supposed to be in

(01:02:55):
getting justice for them, and it's thirty years later and
there still has been no justice for them. I think
I'm going to leave off here because this is a
lot to talk about. It's very heavy, and this is
probably as graphic as it's going to get until we're
in court, and then it will be even more graphic. Again,
there's so much.

Speaker 5 (01:03:15):
So next week we're going to continue to learn about
the victims and the murders, but we're also going to
be looking at the judicial system and what happens when
cops try to quickly solve crime and be heroes, and
what happened in this particular case. Obviously, we're going to
talk to my dad. I'm going to ramble a lot,

(01:03:35):
and it's going to be a good time. Thank you
so much for listening to this episode. Thank you Daniella
for telling us about Stevie, Michael and Chris.

Speaker 4 (01:03:45):
So thank you for listening to another episode of Broad's
next Door. I will see you in part two.

Speaker 8 (01:03:51):
Hey min Angel and Hay Blue Jay, Hey the Cardinal,
Hey flies with the wand Hey what over me day
and night? I believe that with all my heart, mind, body,
in Tolt, he's a master of the world. Now, that's
how I feel about him.

Speaker 11 (01:04:11):
Not only is Davie, but.

Speaker 13 (01:04:13):
So with christ for Byers and Michael Moore.

Speaker 9 (01:04:16):
I believe the Lord is gonna direct me, guide me,
and leave me.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
And we're gonna give the glory to him. There's a
voices calling me from an old.

Speaker 14 (01:04:28):
Tree.

Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
I did, Whispers draw closer to me. Leave this world
are behind It's and the new place in May

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West Memphis Murders Pt 1: Stevie, Michael and Chris

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